


Break the System

by livethekind



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Tron - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 22:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livethekind/pseuds/livethekind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever wonder what might lay out there, just beyond the wall of this infernal box? What might happen if we allowed ourselves to escape once and awhile?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break the System

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Homestuck Shipping Olympics, Bonus Round 3. Tron was an arcade game created in 1982 based on the movie of the same title.

_This isn't so bad_ , he thinks, once he's won a few rounds and isn't dead, derezzed somewhere in the middle of the cycle grid. _A program could get used to this._ And sometimes he feels like maybe he's part of a machine -- his hands leave the bars of the light cycle because it moves without his touch, a User operating his controls _for him_ it's almost like magic. But sometimes it's only Dave, alone with his light cycle in the middle of a darkened world that fills so quickly with bursts of orange. The deadly kind, too. Get trapped and you're dead, run into one and you're dead, look away and fall, you're dead. Every time the game starts up he tries again to win, and sometimes he does. But just as easily he falls to the man with orange circuitry coursing through his body, leaving walls of orange in his wake.

It's one of these days when he's not riding so well - nine out of ten and he's already sore from disappearing and then being brought back to reality - when he stops to consider if this is what he actually wants to be doing with his life. Not stops, exactly. It comes to him when he's fighting, riding side by side with the same man in orange.

"Did you ever think about what you'd wanna do if you busted this joint?" He's yelling over the whir of the light cycles, and the orange man looks at him through his tinted helmet. "We could bust a wall! They'd never find us. Hey -- isn't it tough to be the bad guy all the time? Must get a lot of shit for that when you're on your days off, right?"

"If you paid as much attention to the race as you did to inane things like that, we might actually have a fair match." The orange man speaks for the first time and he realizes that it's a _girl_ \-- a rather pretty program too, now that he notices the curves hidden away under her light cycle uniform. She takes the moment while he's ogling to cut in front of him, leaving a streak of orange that's too wide to navigate. Dave lets out a strangled _fuck you_ \-- before he's just a pile of blue dust on the floor, ready to be picked up, put back together, and played once more.

The next time, he doesn't do as much ogling -- "Sup? The name's Dave--" and she doesn't cut him off quite so quickly.

"I'm Rose. You're going to lose."

"Like hell I am, I'm the grand master of this ceremony and we haven't even gotten the party hats out yet. Better strap yourself to the seat of your cycle, because I've got a show for you."

Five seconds later, he ran into a wall, completely oblivious to the trap she had set up for him. And then three minutes after that they were back in action, side by side, swerving away only to come back together. Fated to fight like this. "To answer your question, I do get tired of being the 'bad guy' sometimes," she tells him as they ride. "But it's never any less enjoyable to watch your face when you lose."

"Maybe I like watching you lose too. Ever think of that?"

"Barely. You aren't very good." But this time he wins -- the magic takes over, the controls are out of his hand and he rides her into a maze with no possible escape. The look on her face is one of pure contempt right as she flashes to the ground, and Dave decides that no, he doesn't actually like it when Rose dies. He likes it better when she smiles, which she does sometimes (usually when he's about to die, he'll admit). But those are the best times.

"Do you want to break free of this prison, Dave?" It's a few hundred cycles after their last conversation -- she's kept eerily to herself and it's started to freak him out -- but this is a new turn for her. Dave almost stops his cycle in shock, not that he actually could. "Ever wonder what might lay out there, just beyond the wall of this infernal box? What might happen if we allowed ourselves to escape once and awhile?"

"...Yeah." Immediately, they looked at each other and nodded. No more words were needed; they had been playing this game for what felt like forever, and they knew the ways to communicate without. Their light cycles sped side by side, headed for the wall, breaking through, light cycles completely off their standardized grid--

_( Meanwhile, in English's Gaming Shop, a boy and a girl stood side by side, jamming the joysticks back and forth as far as they could go. Still, no figures reappeared on the screen, and the light walls left behind by the cycles that had been on the screen a minute ago flickered out of existence._

_"You broke it!" The boy complained, poking his sister in the shoulder. She responded with a flick of her tongue and a pout._

_"No way! John, you're the one that breaks everything."_

_"Wait until I tell Dad! Haha, you're gonna be in so much trouble!" John ran off towards the front of the store, Jade trailing in his wake. Just once, she looked back at the console, figures inexplicably missing from the screen, refusing to return._

_And she wondered, wherever they went - if computer people could go places - they were having fun. )_


End file.
